Canada PPR to Passport Back: How Long Each Step Takes (Oct 2026)
Your visa is approved and IRCC has asked for your passport. From here you have four steps: book and hand in at VFS, the visa office stamps it, VFS sends it back by Blue Dart, and Blue Dart delivers it. This site can measure two of those steps. The other two it cannot see at all.
The figures below come from Blue Dart's public tracking of 51,726 Canadian visa passports that VFS India sent back, with the earliest dispatch on 6 July 2026. The data was last updated on 10 October 2026.
The steps at a glance
| Step | Who does it | Does this site measure it? | Today's numbers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IRCC decides and sends the passport request | IRCC | No | Not in this data |
| 2. You book a VFS slot and hand in | You and VFS | No | Not in this data |
| 3. Stamping, until VFS sends it back | Canadian visa office, then VFS | Yes | Half within 14 days |
| 4. Delivery to your door | Blue Dart | Yes | Half within 1 day, 9 in 10 within 3 |
Step 1: The passport request
This step ends when the request reaches you, so you have already done it. This site has nothing on how long IRCC takes to decide or to send the request. Those dates are not in Blue Dart's tracking.
Step 2: Booking and handing in at VFS
How long you wait for a VFS slot depends on your city and the time of year. This site does not measure it, because nothing shows up in Blue Dart's tracking until your passport is on its way back. What matters for the rest of this post is your hand-in date. It is the date at the start of your tracking ID, and every wait below is counted from that day.
Step 3: Stamping, from hand-in to dispatch
This is the long step, and the one most people worry about. The Canadian visa office puts the visa in your passport, then VFS sends it back. IRCC publishes nothing about this step, so the Blue Dart data is the only way to see it.
For most of the summer it took about three weeks. In September it got faster:
| Handed in (week of) | Passports | 1 in 10 back within | Half back within | 9 in 10 back within |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 August | 3,836 | 9 days | 22 days | 26 days |
| 17 August | 4,092 | 12 days | 23 days | 25 days |
| 24 August | 3,354 | 9 days | 22 days | 23 days |
| 31 August | 3,906 | 10 days | 18 days | 20 days |
| 7 September | 3,453 | 8 days | 14 days | 14 days |
| 14 September | 2,645 | 9 days | 14 days | 15 days |
The data does not show why the wait dropped. It shows when passports left, never why.
The passports sent in the last 7 days tell the same story. Of 4,704 passports, half had been away 14 days or less, and at every centre except New Delhi the typical wait was 14 days. New Delhi's was 13.
There is a catch in the same figures. 9 in 10 of those passports were sent back within 35 days, which means 1 in 10 had been waiting longer than that. Most passports now come back in about two weeks. A small group takes far longer, and the data cannot say whose or why.
Your centre
The ten centres are close to each other. Here is how passports handed in from 24 August to 20 September have done:
| VFS centre | Passports | Half back within | 9 in 10 back within |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jalandhar | 3,362 | 15 days | 23 days |
| Chandigarh | 2,258 | 14 days | 23 days |
| Ahmedabad | 2,203 | 17 days | 23 days |
| New Delhi | 1,326 | 13 days | 22 days |
| Bengaluru | 1,318 | 14 days | 23 days |
| Mumbai | 980 | 17 days | 23 days |
| Hyderabad | 800 | 17 days | 22 days |
| Chennai | 631 | 14 days | 23 days |
| Pune | 287 | 14 days | 23 days |
| Kolkata | 193 | 14 days | 22 days |
These four weeks include late-August hand-ins from before the speed-up, so the "9 in 10" column looks slower than recent weeks. Check the comparison page for this week's figures at each centre.
Which day it leaves
VFS sends passports back on weekdays, and not evenly. In the last 60 days, Monday was the busiest day with 8,028 passports and Friday the quietest with 4,439. Some days are much bigger than others. On 21 September, 2,650 passports went out in one day. A quiet few days does not mean your passport is stuck.
Step 4: Blue Dart delivery
This is the short step. Over the last 30 days Blue Dart made 16,877 deliveries. Half arrived within 1 day of dispatch and 9 in 10 within 3 days. 53% arrived the same day or the next.
If your tracking shows dispatch, you can start planning around a date. Before that, you can't be sure.
What this site can't tell you
- It only counts passports VFS sends back by Blue Dart, roughly a third. Passports collected in person are not counted.
- It cannot tell visitor, study, work and PR passports apart. They all share one kind of tracking ID.
- It shows when a passport left, never why one is slow.
What this means if you are handing in now
- Expect about two weeks for stamping, then a few days for delivery. For the latest complete weeks, 9 in 10 passports were sent back within 15 days, and Blue Dart delivered 9 in 10 within 3 days of dispatch.
- Keep a buffer for the slow tenth. Among passports sent in the last 7 days, 1 in 10 had been away longer than 35 days. If your flight or job start date can't move, leave room for that.
- Don't book a fixed flight before dispatch. The wait went from about three weeks to about two in September, and nothing in the data says it will stay that way.
- If most passports from your hand-in date are back and yours isn't, you are probably in the slow group. The visa office does the stamping, so IRCC's web form is the place to ask, not VFS.
Find your centre and your hand-in date on the live tracker to see how many passports from your day are already on their way, and look at your centre's page to see whether the wait is going up or down.